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Recently, I was sitting in Denny’s with a friend of mine discussing how an average employee can become wealthy.

The premise was that the employee does not want to quit their job until he/she has enough money or cash flow to do so.

We came up with a good number of methods, but decided that many didn’t apply to the ‘average’ employee, like possessing special talents and special connections. Buying lottery tickets, marrying a wealthy person or coming into a large inheritance didn’t apply either. We wanted something that anyone could control to get to their financial ‘goal line.’

Here are a few things we wrote down:

* Work in a company that offers stock options: You would have to wait a LONG time for the options to become worth something, IF the company survives and performs well. In rare cases, like the Facebooks of the world, being in the right company at the right time can mean lots of $$$, but this is rare. We weren’t too excited about this one because you had to be lucky, and you’re putting your fate in someone else’s hands.

* Another one was to save the money you make. We felt that saving $20,000 for the average family was little too high, but we assumed that number anyway. We felt if that number was too high, someone could have a side job to save up to that much. So with that, it would take 50 years to get to $1 million. We assumed any interest after taxes would break even with inflation so they canceled each other out. We felt this method (saving) took way too long, but it’s one method an employee could consider.

* Another one was climbing up the corporate ladder. Work hard, and focus on getting promoted and hope for more pay with better benefits. We felt this is something that some people are comfortable doing and that a hard-working employee could do this, even if they had to change companies to climb up the corporate ladder. A smart, hard working employee can do that and would dedicate their lives to work and looking good in front of their peers. It’s not for me, but it is for some.

* We also felt that someone could start a small business and build it into something that could make them wealthy. As long as they don’t let this small business become a job, they could build something that over time leverages other people’s skills and time – definitely a good way to go. It’s using leverage to get to their goals, and I like this method.

* Finally, the last method is investing – using financial leverage to make more money, faster, without having to deal with too many employees. This method uses money to make more money, specifically, using other people’s money to make money. I like this method as well.

We covered a few more that didn’t fit with the main assumptions we made about an average employee. So in the end, we came back to which one would be the fastest among all the ones that we discussed. And it came down to this: